All Forum Posts by: Chris O.

Yes, licensed and insured. It does seem there's a general DIY tone on this forum, however there are enough people managing other properties that I thought I'd ask.

When you say arbitrage, I assume you're referring to people long term renting a property than turning around and STRing it themselves. If you were referring to owners contracting out the management of their STR, I don't see any negative to that. No different then someone wishing to build their own deck verse hiring someone.

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Originally posted by @John Underwood:

Most of my rentals come from Vrbo, a few from Airbnb and a few direct. I just type up a simple one page agreement of it is someone I don't know. Just has who is staying the dates and the amount for the most part.

These are your own rental properties though correct? I'm wondering more for those that are managing other peoples properties

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Just curious the structure others use for their guest contracts. I'm in the process of drafting a new one and setting up as a contract between the owner of the house and the guest - with myself out of the equation. It will also be a one party signed agreement (guest only) - not requiring the owner of the home to sign each one.

Wondering if anyone else is set up that way, or if they have a different method and why they chose that.

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Originally posted by @David Bergmann:

PriceLabs is a dynamic pricing tool, but they've recently implemented a "market dashboard" that I am liking a lot. You basically drop a pin on an address and the data it produces is on a radius around that (5-50 KM). It's $10/month per "pin" that you report on. It's cheaper than AirDNA and doesn't cut off at geographic boundaries such as zipcode/neighborhood. There are still some stats you can only get from AirDNA that PriceLabs can't do, but I think it might suit the needs you described.

Thanks - any idea if that service provides historical context? I'd like to remove 2020 from the equation as good or bad, the data is skewed.

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Price Labs, OwnerReservations, Remote Locks, Noiseaware and looking at Hostfully.

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I sent you a PM with some more detail - but there's really two schools of thought

1) - Low initial price (10-15%) and owner pays for everything.

2) Higher all in price - (25-35%) - but you cover payment processing, consumables, photo/listing setup, pass through maintenance work, remote lock service, welcome books, etc etc etc.

You can combine the two to meet in the middle etc - but you really need to think about what kind of service you want to provide owners - nuts and bolts admin or white glove

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Originally posted by @April Vogt:

I use a Google Doc as a home manual and send a shortened URL to every guest before check-in. An owner sent me his template years ago and I adapted it to my listings. I've sent it to multiple other owners, it seems to work pretty well with minimal effort and it updates in real time. Every 3-4 months I may replace the hard copy we keep at the home, but I've found that most guests will not read the home manual anyways :) The Doc also works well for my team who helps me with the communication side of my listings, as the answers to 98% of the questions guests typically ask are contained within it. When responding to guests, we can just copy & paste these answers straight from the manual with a little personalization and everyone is happy

Do you load up both the house info and the local attractions/info in the same PDF?

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Originally posted by @Melissa Romano:

@Brian Gerlach I second Hostfully. When I was managing three of my units at a time, I didn’t actually pay for a subscription with multiple guest books but rather saved each book as a PDF. It was excellent because I was able to very easily reuse content I had created for other templates. The calendar software i used either automatically sent to Airbnb guests or sent me a push notification to manually send to guests through Vrbo (I believe these messages can now be automated, but I am taking a break from hosting and I’m not quite sure)

Hostfully provides a free version you can PDF verse the subscription in the cloud?

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Originally posted by @John Underwood:

Originally posted by @Chris O.:

Originally posted by @John Underwood:

Why don't you get current data looking forward instead of looking back? You can get that from competition on Vrbo and Airbnb.

some digging would produce some insight on rates, but not as effective I don't think as previous annualized. But for occupancy, I'm not sure how I could do the leg work on a go forward basis to gather estimates that are useable. Do you have a technique you use that you could share?

For Occupancy just look at how many days are booked on similar properties calendars. You will need to do this a few times during the year to get updates. This is not perfect as you will not know if a owner has some dates blocked for personal use vs being rented. I'm sure Airdna can't tell the difference either though.

Appreciated,

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Originally posted by @John Underwood:

Why don't you get current data looking forward instead of looking back? You can get that from competition on Vrbo and Airbnb.

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All Forum Posts by: Chris O.

Chris O. has started 15 posts and replied 69 times.

Post: Managers - how do you structure your guest rental contracts?

Post: Managers - how do you structure your guest rental contracts?

Post: Managers - how do you structure your guest rental contracts?

Post: Rental Data - Demo/free options?

Post: What tools are you using to manage your STR more efficiently?

Post: Airbnb Owners but non-operators- What do you pay your management?

Post: Electronic / online house guidebook / handbook

Post: Electronic / online house guidebook / handbook

Post: Rental Data - Demo/free options?

Post: Rental Data - Demo/free options?